


there's a beauty in being broken, i've been seeing it

by fate-motif (fate_motif)



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Whipping Tenderness, Probably Inaccurate Medical Practicioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23484730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fate_motif/pseuds/fate-motif
Summary: Could it be true that whipping men good men bad and bad men worse? Would it be true for Tom? For Magnus?
Relationships: Magnus Manson/Thomas Hartnell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	there's a beauty in being broken, i've been seeing it

Twelve lashes, and all of the company's eyes on him. That was Tom's punishment for listening to scamps.

The ropes may have felt like a red hot poker upon Tom's back, but nothing bores deeper into him than the shifting glances his mates are giving him. The officers' glum lips and feigned disinterest, his fellow ABs wincing in sympathy. Within him, he cries out to all of them, _"I'm not proud of what I did!"_ Instead, he pants and gasps between lashes, until he's freed from the cat and allow to limp off to where Dr. McDonald waited for him.

"I'll need to salt your wounds; prevent infection," says the doctor, already setting up a clean bowl of water and rag for the process. On the table where he's preparing the bandages was another bowl with a rag soaked through red and brown with blood. On the bench, where Tom was meant to sit, was the recipient of said implements, snorting back snot and wiping off tears but with his mouth shut. And his eyes set on Tom.

Magnus' whipping hadn't been easy to watch. He was able to keep from crying out most of the time, but the tears streaking down his dirty face and the snorting made the spectacle go beyond merely his own embarrassment, but everyone else's secondhand as they watched the seaman's dignity eroded away. When it was Tom's turn, he'd hoped his own whipping wasn't unpleasant as all those he'd seen before him, or the one he'd just witnessed.

Dr. McDonald's light touch couldn't stop Tom from both gasping out in pain from the salt, and from jerking his right arm outwards in a motion that strikes Manson clean on the face. Manson flinches backwards from the blow, and edges away from Tom, but still looks over to him with the same queasy, unsettling glance he'd been giving him before.

Pity? Sympathy? The man is hard to read.

"Sorry," blurts out Tom. 

"S'fine." For some reason, Manson smiles back at him wearily.

It occurs to Tom then, through the stabs of pain, that Manson looks used to what was going on. He's hunched over, resigned, breathing through his mouth because his nose was too blocked up; far too calm for a man who's never been whipped before. Manson looks back at him again, and his sentiment finally registers to Tom as compassion. Like it had been Tom who'd asked him whether the whipping would hurt instead of the other way around.

Somewhere close by, groans of anguish echo from the remaining whipping still taking place. 

Manson has finally stopped staring, in a glance that indicates it's just occurred to him he's been rude. This coaxes a gentle crook from the corner of Tom's lips.

"I thought you hadn't been whipped before," confesses Tom. Manson, ruefully, shakes his head. "Then why did you ask if it would hurt?"

Manson shudders, some involuntary twinge wracking his body and through his wounds. "Every ship is different."  
His disciplined silence but clear misery makes perfect sense to Tom now. On instinct, he stretches out a hand to his knee.

"We get to start over again now, though."

Manson's eyes flicker to the sickbay door, clearly unsure about that answer.

"It's - hard for me not to get in trouble," confesses Manson, clearly downcast. Tom doesn't doubt it. There are ne'er-do-wells everywhere who couldn't change, who were to live forever under a chastising glare. For all that Tom could change, the navy doesn't work for men like Manson. What stings him was that, deep down, Manson was no scamp. 

Mr. Hickey has finally arrived to the sickbay, with a half-dead look in his face and a broken grin while he holds his pants close to the waist. The fight through the pain has transfigured a man who had been so sure of himself just a few hours earlier. Dr. McDonald immediately heads to assist Mr. Hickey to disinfect his wounds. And yet - he also doesn't look unfamiliar with this agony. It's some form of betrayal that's left him stricken, like he'd hoped the officers would have rewarded his wiliness in spite of his transgression.

Tom shakes his head.

Never, ever again. He didn't need to see this ever again.

* * *

With Terror being managed by a skeleton crew, Tom has the luxury of expressing his pain more easily about the other ABs. The work piles up on his muscles and the healing goes slowly. The pain is the least of his worries. The stinging and heat from the wounds trouble him, and every time he heads to Dr. McDonald he asks if they look infected. The laudanum only soothes his anxieties in part. _Men don't die from standard whippings_ , the laudanum offered. But something about this place is so deadly, so merciless, and John had been fine just a few days before he was gone -

One evening as he sleeps, an irrepressible itch comes over his back. Tom grits his teeth through the torturous sensation, until he's unable to go back to sleep and slips off his shirt with great difficulty with every intention of raking his nails over every scar -

"Let me help."

Tom's stopped in his tracks by Manson, who hasn't been sleeping either. He slings himself off his hammock and makes his way to Tom with a hesitant expression, barely visible under the meagre light of the forecastle. Struck by the interruption, Tom turns his back to him.

"You're looking well," comments Manson in his husky voice, while kneeling before his hammock to meet his face. He then places a hand on Tom's shoulder, firmly. "M - may I?"

Tom glances over his shoulder. His mate actually looks sure of what he was doing, and Tom has no doubt that he's familiar with this. In the back of his mind he recalls other sailors massaging each other's backs for the pain, gently, in a way he'd disapproved then for encouraging this to keep happening.

"You may."

Manson's hands are firm and strong over his hot skin, and the sure yet meticulous motions over his back don't feel strong enough to get his wounds to bleed again. Relief pours in with every motion, and Tom closes his eyes instinctively. Soon he has to fight the urge to fall asleep there in Manson's arms.

"Are you feeling better, Tom?"

Tom's eyes fly open, and he's once again on his back on the hammock with his shirt on. Manson's face is right before him, crouching by him in concern. Tom is unable hold back a laugh.

"How did you learn to do that, Magnus?" The question is more than anything rhetorical, and he's pleased to see Manson's cheeks gain a little color.

The bell has rung for the basin, and Tom bolts to get ready for cleaning like the others. As he does, he revises his memories over and over as to when he had lost his bearings, when Manson had finished and dressed him up. He almost feels a twinge of regret that there was no way Magnus could have held him through the night. He wishes -

**Author's Note:**

> title from dermot kennedy's "without fear". finally, the obligatory hurt/comfort this ship deserves.


End file.
